I think that in this case the ‘company culture’ tipped to the wrong side of the scale. @Work we do overtime, and we ‘expect’ people to be available off hours sometimes. But not to the point that it might be detrimental to your performance evaluation.

In some cases (i.e. our case/what i experienced) doing overtime together will actually strengthen intra-team relations; not sure about whether this will still hold up when overtime is expected ALL THE TIME.

In my experience, shared overtime always strengthens team bonds. If there’s too much of it, it unites the team against their employer which is obviously a terrible outcome from the employer’s point of view.

I think the other problem with shared overtime is that it slightly biases the teambuilding toward younger members of the company who don’t (yet) have obligations to a spouse or children. A small ripple, perhaps, but one that hurts a segment of the industry that we already tend to marginalize.